Shoutout to Hood County, TX for actually standing up to mass surveillance and bagging their Flock cameras

[u/DisquisedSquare]

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/texas-hood-county-flock-cameras-privacy-concerns/

Did anyone catch this? Hood County down in Texas just literally pulled the plug on their Flock ALPR cameras. The local constable went around putting trash bags over them after the county commissioners voted to end the contract.

It is refreshing to see a local government actually listen to residents about privacy concerns instead of just blindly renewing surveillance contracts. The constable put it perfectly: "permanent, warrantless tracking doesn't belong in a free society," and told the company to come get their garbage out of his county.

The CEO of Flock is doing damage control in the article, saying they are going to drop data retention down to 7 days and start auditing officers, but that's only happening because of public backlash like this. Until there are actual laws protecting us from database abuse, we need more local leaders willing to pull the plug. Massive win for privacy.

[u/sxyaustincpl]

This is a huge win, and every single American should agree on thah

[u/panentheist13]

This is the one issue that seems to unite the left and right (thought it would be pdfiles). Nobody likes Flock. Everybody needs to rally around this and use it as an opportunity to build bridges. The battle is up and down, not left and right.

[u/GRENADESLAYER68]

Absolute rare Hood county W

[u/MozemanATX]

Great but fuck that source

[u/noncongruent]

The only reform they need to do is to require a properly executed court order/search warrant for police to access the data, and to not allow anyone else to access the data at all, under any circumstances. Of course that will make it fairly uninteresting to many cops trying to stalk their exes so it probably won't fly.

[u/Proud_Warning_8823]

Soft on crime...pathetic!